Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The Devil; Satan.
  • noun One of the fallen angels in Milton's Paradise Lost. Beelzebub was next to Satan in power.
  • noun An evil spirit; a demon.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A god of the Philistines, who had a famous temple at Ekron. He was worshiped as the destroyer of flies.
  • noun A name of the Mycetes ursinus, a howling monkey of South America. See cut under howler.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The title of a heathen deity to whom the Jews ascribed the sovereignty of the evil spirits; hence, the Devil or a devil. See Baal.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • proper noun The Devil.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun (Judeo-Christian and Islamic religions) chief spirit of evil and adversary of God; tempter of mankind; master of Hell

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old English Belzebub, from Late Latin Beelzebūb, from Late Greek Beelzeboub, from Hebrew ba‘al zəbûb, lord (of the) fly, alteration of ba‘al zəbûl, lord prince; see bעl in Semitic roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin Beelzebūb, used in the Vulgate to translate Ancient Greek βεελζεβούβ and Hebrew בעל זבוב (ba‘al-z'būb, "fly-lord") (mentioned in 2 Kings i as "the god of Ekron").

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